


224B Baker Street

by notes de la rédaction (ndlr)



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Awesome Mrs. Hudson, F/F, Love, M/M, Other, POV John Watson, POV Lesbian Character, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-07-28 06:41:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7628971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndlr/pseuds/notes%20de%20la%20r%C3%A9daction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things look very different from the window across the street.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mrs. Turner Next Door's Got Married Ones

Sharon looked outside and wondered how long it would be before the rain stopped.

She hadn't been in London very long, and she knew to expect a lot of rain. It was far from the most foreign thing about the place; she had lived in Portland, Oregon, once, after all, a place where rain accumulated to the point where it was best just to give up and wear water-resistant parkas and clogs every day. It was almost fun to take an umbrella everywhere while living in this city, even if it was awkward on the Tube. Really, she didn't mind the rain or the gray skies she was confronted with almost every day here. But today, the rain was getting to her because she was hoping to get a better view into the windows across the street, which was made more difficult if the sky remained this gloomy.

The Blond One would pull the draperies closed if the sun didn't come out, she knew.

Because Sharon didn't dare introduce herself to people, not yet, not when knowing their names might make it too uncomfortable to later watch them walking around in their apartment. And for some reason, she had been taken with an immediate fascination for the two men who lived across the street, who seemed to be running in and out at all hours and had such an interesting cast of characters coming to visit. Were they running some kind of illegal operation or did they just have a lot of friends? She was increasingly curious with every day that passed, and they had been in this flat for several weeks already without the story becoming any clearer.

"What are you doing?"

Sharon jumped. 

"Jesus, you're afraid of your own shadow, aren't you?" groused Cathy, striding across the living room toward the stairs, pulling on a rain jacket as she went. This isn't the first time Sharon had been accused of being jumpy; their teenage daughters were always rolling their eyes and saying the same thing. And they were right; Sharon somehow would never hear people coming, only find them standing in a room suddenly, making her gasp in shock, much to everyone else's annoyance and her own embarrassment.

Sharon knew this wasn't what Cathy was objecting to this time; she knew it was the fact that she was propped up on the edge of the sofa, obviously staring out the windows at people going by on the street, instead of typing purposefully on her laptop. 

"Just go over to the cafe, instead of creeping on the people going in there, for God's sake," Cathy said, and before Sharon could respond, she was out the door and halfway down the stairs.

Wasn't it just like Cathy to be so little concerned by what she was interested in that she would jump to that conclusion, Sharon thought.

__________

Alone in the flat, Sharon wandered back into the tiny kitchen to get coffee, and then, although the lack of sunlight made the room dark even at this early hour, she deliberately turned out the lights in the main room and settled in on a hard-backed chair near the edge of the window. Nobody could spot her sitting there from outside, she knew. She tugged her iPhone out of her back pocket and tossed it out of arm's reach on the far end of the sofa. She was going to zone out a little, slow her breathing, not give in to the urge to feel resentful that Cathy was going off to work for God knew how many hours and leaving her in the flat, that the girls were at music camp up in Galway and wouldn't be home for two more weeks, that she was, basically, supposed to be sitting here working on freelance medical transcription assignments like some kind of drone when the whole big city of London was spread out before her, but that all she really wanted to do was speculate about the lives of people she was probably never going to get up the nerve to introduce herself to.

Sharon couldn't see herself starting any kind of conversation with either of these neighbors. She did not have men friends, as a rule, and that had been true for years. She had had boyfriends, of course—well, but that was 30 years ago, tapering off in her choices of companion from the avidly heterosexual to the frankly kinky to the absolutely gay, and then declaring herself a lesbian and never again straying from the company of women. 

Even just paying this much attention to a couple of men felt weird to her. Yet she couldn't deny, she had taken an immediate fancy to them, as they would say in this place.

Not for the first time, Sharon asked herself, "Why are you obsessing over a couple of middle-aged men sitting in chairs in a London flat, when they haven't done anything in particular?" The question seemed especially pertinent because she was resisting admitting it, but it felt like there was something a little...romantic about the way she was starting to think of these strange men, the way they were starting to become an unmissable part of her day, only to be interacted with in this secretive, one-sided way when she was alone in the flat.

The one she had mentally dubbed the Blond One was the one she was drawn to first. Hard to tell from up here, but he seemed to be relatively short in stature, yet somewhat muscular. He walked with what she could only characterize as an aggressive stride—was this some kind of Napoleon complex, an idea she rejected as somehow outdated and male-domination-generated? What it looked like to her was more the purposeful stride of some kind of official. Maybe he was in the government, or public relations, or just a Type A personality. She considered and rejected the idea that the Blond One was some kind of military officer. Trying and failing to picture him guarding the Queen in a Beefeater costume, she shook her head in amusement at resorting to such a touristic stereotype.

She could not take her eyes off this man, though, for whatever reason. Her interest was only increased when, once in a while, he would clamber out of a black executive sedan like someone coming from a black-tie event, yet when he reached for his key at the doorstep, she'd be able to see his Adidas shoes and jeans under a casual rain jacket or hoodie, clothing that was so out of line with the sort of vehicle he had been riding in. Famous artist of some kind, maybe? But nobody going by on the street ever seemed to give him a second glance.

Other times she would see him getting in or out of a police car, and that was even more perplexing, because he would ride in the back, not the front. Undercover officer, perhaps? But she'd dismiss that idea, too, when she realized how publicly he was greeting and talking with the badge-wearing officers who were driving him, and how he made no attempt to cover up the fact that he was getting a police escort to and from his own home.

You really are a little bit too lonely, aren't you, she said to herself, preparing for a good wallow in self-pity, but then she blinked in surprise as the Blond One emerged suddenly onto the pavement, looking left and right as he opened an umbrella against the downpour. 

Sharon almost could have called out the window to him, so much did she already feel some kind of bond with this stranger. And here is one of the reasons, she mused as the door opened again. Feeling like someone watching a foreign movie with no subtitles, she took a quick sip of her rapidly cooling coffee as she pulled her head further back to be absolutely sure she wouldn't be spotted. 

Not that anybody would bother looking up her way, anyway.

The door to 221B had opened with enough emphasis that Sharon could hear the "bang" from inside her flat, and out stepped the man whom she thought of as the Other One.

Lean, tall, and supremely nervous in his movements, this one was noticeably younger and less in control of himself than the Blond One, but there was also a sense—Sharon wasn't sure from what cues—that he was directing whatever it was these two men were up to. Maybe he was the boss, or the one with the money? she considered. He always dressed somewhat formally—office executive, she'd say, if it weren't for the clearly unorthodox hours they both kept. His hair was longish, with loose curls that tended to fly around his head in an unkempt but still fascinating pattern. His skin was freakishly pale, which didn't jibe with his companion's tennis-player-like tan, since they seemed to be together most of the time. Still, she considered, Blond One obviously went to the gym, so maybe he played outdoor sports as well? She started wondering about him jogging in shorts, or damp from swimming in an outdoor pool, and shook her head in disbelief at herself.

While she did, the two men paused outside the doorway, appearing to confer about something. She could see the Blond One looked furious about something. He turned to head toward the corner—that's where the Tube station is, Sharon figured—but before he'd taken two steps, the Other One had grabbed him by the edge of his coat and swung him lightly around. He was clearly furious and almost shouting something right into the Blond One's face. How she wished she had the nerve to fling open her window in time to hear what was being said, if that was even possible from this distance.

The Blond One broke away, a look of incredulous shock on his face, and almost ran toward the corner.

The Other One just stood there, then slowly turned and headed back inside, his face not visible from Sharon's perch across the street.

Well, _that's_ not what I expected, Sharon thought, and she was inexplicably quite sorry to be watching, and she turned away toward her computer.

Fifty years old, and here I am peering at strangers out the window to fill in the excitement that is missing every time I realize again that Cathy no longer sees me as a partner, doesn't love me anymore, has closed me out in every constructive way. And why shouldn't she? Here I am, too afraid to actually meet people in person, cowering in the shadow in a strange room in a strange country, trying to overhear the conversations of two people just because they seem to be having a more interesting life than I am having....

And, time to stop feeling sorry for yourself, you idiot, she remonstrated with herself, and snapped open the laptop, and got to work on the medical transcription project she'd started a week ago that was due soon.

 


	2. Sherlock Wonders about the IQ of the Whole Street

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The view from 221B.

Sherlock Holmes ran a hand through his hair, which was now wet, then huffed in frustration and slammed his way up the seventeen steps to his flat, still incandescent with anger at John Watson. This did not happen often; he prided himself on his reason and self-control, which he had long valued over all things.  

He almost hoped Mrs. Hudson were home—which he knew she wasn't, probably out at the shops; he had heard her leave earlier—because if home, he could count on her opening her door to see what the commotion was, then could handily serve as a receptacle for his righteous indignation. "You be nice to Dr. Watson," she would probably say. Tedious. Probably just as well.

There is something so infuriating about John Watson, he thought, not for the first or the hundredth time, as he slammed his way into his upstairs flat.

Yet there was also something so...engaging about John Watson, something he had realized since his first day taking up residence with the man. Somehow, Sherlock realized, John was different from the dull, idiotic mass of humanity whose company he had rejected for most of his life. 

Which is why Sherlock was so agitated by John's refusal to see logic in this case. It was a simple matter of going undercover in the City for a few nights to break up a computer hacking operation, barely even dangerous if one took the appropriate precautions, and the fact that Sebastian Moran, a dangerous man whose tracks were so well hidden that Sherlock had not yet been able to pin any actual crime on him to date, was believed to be involved made him positively thirst to get started. 

It was completely out of character for John not to want to go along with him. It was absolutely unacceptable that he didn't want Sherlock to go, either.

Sherlock flung himself on the sofa, but first he took a sidelong glance out the window, through a small crack in the draperies that allowed him to see across the street. Yes, the Curious Woman was there. He could see that she was seated, not in a soft and comfortable chair but on an upright chair or perhaps even a stool, trying to make herself less conspicuous. 

Mrs. Hudson had alluded to a gay married couple living across the street, on that first day when John came to see the flat, he remembered. He hadn't said a thing about it at the time—just wanting to let the statement sit, unchallenged, knowing how precarious his brand-new flatmate relationship was and not wanting to do anything to muck it up. But he did believe that Mrs. Turner's flat must have been rented to men. Had, in fact, kind of looked around for them whenever he went in or out of their flat. He couldn't deny he was curious; would John be uncomfortable around them? Would they even meet? He was loath to admit even to himself that he pictured the four of them meeting serendipitously at Speedy's cafe downstairs, eventually sharing some carryout or going to the Chinese restaurant down on the corner together, becoming....friends? Would John go for something like that? Would he see the parallels, view these two presumably (in Sherlock's mind palace, most definitely) happy married partners serve as role models for what he and John could be? This was all new territory for Sherlock, and he tried repeatedly, and failed repeatedly, to put these thoughts into the Delete pile. They persisted. He continued to keep an eye out, resisted the temptation to come right out and lead Mrs. Hudson into telling him more details. Finally, a few weeks after John moved in, he started seeing the window curtains move on the flat across the street. He considered and rejected any idea of this gay male couple he'd imagined being peeping Tom types. He had built them in his mind into resolute, brave, and outgoing people, the kind of men whom they must be, since they did after all dare to go right out and get married and let the world know it, and they wouldn't sneak about like that. So, not Mrs. Turner's married ones then. Balance of probability: an enemy, or, worse, one of Mycroft's people spying on them. He was actually relieved when he focused on the problem and quickly deduced the presence of a relatively harmless-looking pair of middle-aged women living there. 

Lesbians. Obvious! Why had he allowed himself to succumb to the idiocy of seeing but not observing? Mrs. Hudson's married ones were this hard-edged, gray-haired woman, obviously an architect, her briefcase and shoes made that clear, American from the look of her hair and clothes....and the other was this Curious Woman, the one at the window, who couldn't seem to keep herself from peeking out the curtains to see what was going on outside. Is she being held prisoner? he wondered, discarding that thought immediately. No, painfully shy, he decided. Does some kind of work from home—the hair and what he could see of the clothes made that clear. American, too, and had raised children, at an excellent guess. And convinced she hasn't been noticed up there, he concluded with satisfaction, his disappointment at the nonexistence of the hypothetical married male couple fading in the presence of a new conundrum to master.

Whom did she think she was dealing with? he thought, basking in the self-regard and starting to feel his respiration calm and slow from his argument with John.

Sherlock smiled to himself. He was going to have to meet this woman who was trying so hard to make herself mysterious. He looked forward to it, in fact.

 


	3. John Watson Gets Picked Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not every official car is what is appears to be. Nor is every case.

John Watson was a patient man. Well, not a patient man, perhaps, he revised, but a long-suffering one. Sherlock Holmes was absolutely the most infuriating, annoying dickhead he had ever met, and why he put up with his antics he could not imagine.

These were the thoughts that made John clench his fists and dip his head in irritation as he thundered away down the street toward Regents Park. He was going to put some space between himself and Sherlock fucking Holmes, that much was certain. A pint or two in a conveniently located pub, now there was a good idea. Let him stew for an hour or three, and then we would see who is going to go perch on the edge of some half-completed building restoration in the middle of the City, risking life, limb, and dignity, to try to suss out which person out of a thousand-member building crew was responsible for a sophisticated computer hacking conspiracy?! Like hell. Not when it was perfectly clear that the same task could be completed without leaving the sofa. John Watson liked adventure, but he stopped a little bit short of reckless endangerment, thank you very much.

What he wasn't saying was another whole world away from where he stood, now, mid–Baker Street, forcing himself to look over across the street instead of back toward the door of 221B. He was afraid Sherlock would still be standing there, ready to keep arguing; he was afraid he wouldn't be still standing there. Either way, he looked resolutely away, noticing that someone seemed to be looking out the window directly across the street. Some old busybody, he decided, and he kept walking.

What he wasn't saying, not even to himself, was that the reason he objected so strenuously to the undercover idea was because it was, in fact, at a construction site. Sherlock didn't know this, and John would be goddamned if he admitted it, but he was afraid of heights. There was a very good reason for this; John's father had fallen to his death from a construction site when John was 12, and the incident had scarred him deeply.

Besides, after nearly being blown up by Jim Moriarty only weeks ago, John was hedging his bets here. The idea of going to the top of something where a fall could conceivably be...arranged....by Moriarty, by this Moran that Sherlock was currently obsessing over, or just by pure accident was weighing on John. He had seen Sherlock on top of buildings looking for a pink suitcase inside a skip, had seen how fearlessly he clambered across buildings and even jumped across one or two during a chase, and something about seeing him in that precarious position made John's skin crawl.

The first important man in John's life had died that way. He was not going to let the second one—admit it, you coward, Sherlock is that important to you, he thought—have any chance of dying in the same way.

John raised his collar against the rain as he reached the street corner, shaking out his umbrella as he waited to cross. Then, just as he stepped off the curb, he saw a matte ivory-colored Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan approaching, unmistakably slowing for him. Could only be Mycroft's people, he thought with a sigh. Typical.

Sure enough, there was a driver, and the rear window rolled down just enough that he could see an attractive, impeccably dressed woman in business attire in the back seat, beckoning to him. "Dr. Watson," she said. "Please join me."

He clambered in to the car, after closing his umbrella and giving it a quick shake first, already starting to speak his objection to being hijacked. "Trying to convince me to go to that construction site is not going to work, and you can tell Mycroft that," he started to say, but the woman just shook her head and turned her attention back to her smartphone.

They rode in silence for a few streets, the quiet broken only by the tapping of John's own fingers on his phone as he texted Sherlock. 

_Your brother has kidnapped me. Again. - JW_

_Don't be tedious, Dr. Watson. And anyway, I am intercepting my brother's texts for the moment. No reason for him to be unduly alarmed. — MH_ came the almost instant reply, not from Sherlock but from his brother.

 _Where is your admittedly good-looking minion taking me, then? — JW_ John responded to Mycroft's text. Still nothing back from Sherlock.

 _I have no idea what you are referring to, Dr. Watson. — MH_ was the only response.

Just as John typed the first letters of his reply, the car pulled up outside a nondescript office building and stopped. He looked expectantly at the woman in the seat next to him, pausing his typing for the moment, and the woman reached for her briefcase to exit the car. As she did, she reached over casually and flicked the phone out of his grasp. John bent to retrieve it, but he did not sit up again. Nor did he exit the car. Something came down on the back of his head, hard. Then, minus the businesswoman, who marched smartly into the office building and away, the car continued down the street with a knocked-out Dr. Watson slumped across the back seat.

As he lay, insensate, in the back of the Mercedes sedan, he did not see security cameras swiveling the length of each road along which it proceeded, swiftly and silently, somehow avoiding the bulk of weekday-morning traffic in central London.

The next thing he knew, the car was stopped at the site of a construction project in progress, and he was being shaken awake. He was groggy, but as always, immediate danger made his senses sharpen to a fine pitch, a skill he'd perfected in Afghanistan and had all too frequent need for in his work with Sherlock. Almost immediately, he recognized the spot, not far from the food warehouses near St. Bart's hospital. Not the construction site Sherlock kept harping on, at least. That's good, isn't it? he told himself. Probably not even related. Probably a little more of Mycroft's typical drama, he reassured himself.

A man in dusty construction-worker garb hauled him up and out of the car. "Hello, Dr. Watson," he said. "I hope you don't mind that we brought you here a tiny bit against your will." John only grunted. As he stood up, a silver-haired woman with a hard, no-nonsense look on her lined face approached and waved an arm toward him. "Just follow me," she barked out, then turned and marched back the way she came, her square-heeled boots making an unpleasant squelching noise against the broken-up concrete amid which the car had been stopped. "There are people who would like to meet you."

Somewhere across town, Mycroft Holmes was trying very hard not to panic. 

"What do you mean, you lost them?" he all but shrieked at his assistant, Anthea. 

\----------

John Watson was nothing if not a patient man, he reminded himself. If Mycroft wanted to play this game, all surely in the name of amusing himself at his brother's expense, John would not show his distinct lack of amusement at the antics. He would bide his time, get the hell out of here, and he still wouldn't help Sherlock with his frankly ridiculous anti-hacking lark.

As he walked, John made a quick feint to reach for his phone but realized it was no longer in his pocket, so he shook his head to bring himself to greater consciousness and went ahead and followed the woman into the building.

"By the way," she said in a distinctly American accent, as she propelled him into a glass elevator at the edge of the project, "my name is Cathy."

 


	4. Speedy's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock wanted to meet the Married Ones. Perhaps they're not the role models he was hoping for.

It was getting to be lunchtime, and Sharon was only too well aware that there was nothing to eat in the flat. She had meant to go shopping for food all morning but couldn't stop herself from moping, and fantasizing a little about her neighbors across the street, which had led to a bit of an interlude in the bedroom.

It had been a long time since Cathy had shown the slightest interest in sex, and Sharon had spent quite a few years moping about that, but as she used to say to her friends at home, "I'd only end up with the same kind of woman again the next time," with a sigh. Besides, there were the girls to think about. They were 16, a dangerous age and one at which Sharon was certain she didn't want to split up their family by separating from Cathy. Things were precarious enough as it was, with the two of them eager to make plans for college where they would be far apart and no longer seen as "the twins," and Cathy's job taking them all over the world, often at short notice....Sharon's needs were not the point, as Cathy was always happy to remind her.

She found it somehow too dangerous to think about other women. Her mind would go down the pathway of fantasizing about breasts, soft expanses of skin, narrow ankles to grab on to, damp and welcoming folds of skin, and she would warm to it, but she would also feel as though she were already unfaithful to her fourteen-year marriage and twenty-five-year relationship with Cathy. Just thinking that would cool her down again, and she would find any further such thoughts unproductive.

It was so much easier for men, she would think, speculating a little in her head about the men across the street, and on this particular morning, having just witnessed the fiery interaction between the two so mismatched-looking neighbors who lived together got her started down a path that ended with her kicking off her sweats and throwing herself down onto the bed, guiltily fishing in the locked file cabinet next to her side of the bed for her well-hidden box of toys. If her mind strayed to an image of the Blond One pushing the Other One up against a wall, it faded out before there was much detail to the fantasy, but it was enough to help her mind blank out for the few minutes it took to get herself off. It's the sameness you're looking for. Well, that, she told herself as she lolled for a few self-indulgent minutes in the rumpled bedclothes, and to go way, way around the path of feeling neglected, and unappreciated, and middle-aged, and sorry for yourself, and all the way to our final destination at Pathetic. She struggled to hold on to a thread of intrigue and appreciation for the experience, which as always felt as elusive as smoke, before heading for the shower, a vague lack of ease following her all the way under the spray and continuing while she soaped herself up and washed and rinsed out her hair.

Eventually, she knew it was time to go outside, if briefly. The desire for fresh air was enough, but there was also the idea of something sweet to eat to cap off her morning of unproductive indulgence, she thought, snorting a little at herself. Sharon threw on her ratty old Reed College sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, threw a baseball cap over her damp hair, grabbed her umbrella, and headed downstairs, intending to have a quick sandwich at Speedy's across the street prior to seeking out food for dinner. 

Almost as soon as she entered the cafe, she was faced with that friend of her landlady's—Mrs. Johnson? no, Mrs. Hudson—who was for some reason coming back out from the rear of the shop, looking a little distressed. "Hello, dear," she said, but her smile didn't seem genuine. Sharon immediately cast about in her mind for a reason why the lady across the street would be mad at her, but she soon realized it was nothing personal when a man came out from behind the counter, looking sheepish, and called after her, "Elizabeth, wait a minute. You know I didn't mean it."

Mrs. Hudson turned her head, trying to appear haughty, but Sharon could see she was just about to forgive whatever the transgression might have been.

Not wanting to pry, Sharon found a table near the window and sat down, busying herself in staring at her phone screen so she didn't appear to be eavesdropping. There was a text from Cathy.

_Working late. Don't make any dinner for me.  — C_

OK, the warmth of that could light a thousand fires, couldn't it? Sharon thought a little bitterly, seeing in the terse message more evidence that not only did Cathy have very little to offer her, she also wouldn't even accept any kindnesses from Sharon, be they as small as preparing an evening meal for when she did come home. Well, I guess it's Chinese from the place down the street, by myself, again.

 _OK,_ she texted back, determined to be just as brief and cold in her own response, and she dropped her phone on the table. I think I'll have cake for lunch, she told herself. Some sort of lemon cake, and later, some red wine and detective movies. She would fit in her transcription work somewhere in there, like always. It's not as though it would use more than 5 percent of her brain cells, after all. 

Mrs. Hudson waved at her and was out the front door while she was still in line to order said cake, and Sharon was deeply engrossed in her second cup of black coffee and the crumbs from the cake when she felt a presence looming over her table.

She looked up, then further up, and was gazing directly into the piercing stare of the Other One, in the flesh. Not only that, but he seemed to recognize her for some reason.

His eyes were the oddest shade of slate gray or blue, or green? It was very hard to tell which. She felt frozen in place by his gaze, and even more immobilized when he thwacked his gloves down on the table next to her, took a quick intake of breath, and then said, in a rumbling, deep voice: "You're the person who is keeping an eye on us from behind the draperies"—he motioned with a long-fingered hand—"over there, across the way. So I feel the need to ask," he said, accenting the K sound with a guttural sound, "who has placed you there to do so? And why?"

Sharon knew she was turning bright red with embarrassment at having been spotted. She had to say something, so she began to sputter, "No, it's not like that, I am just—just new to the area, and don't know anybody, and I'm home a lot, so if you see me at the window, I'm working on my computer and I am not trying to see anything in particular and...."

The man interrupted her. "There's no need to claim you are on your laptop working. It is quite obvious to those who observe that you are doing no such thing, at least not most of the day. Your landlady is Mrs. Turner, I believe?"

Sharon could only nod."That woman is a menace," the man said. "No doubt she has announced to you that Mrs. Hudson across the street has a...a _couple_ in her flat who should be your sort of people? You could simply knock at our door, as countless others do, and make our acquaintance. No need for this subterfuge. On me, it most assuredly does not work."

Suddenly, to Sharon's great surprise, the man smiled. "Let me take care of that, then. Sherlock Holmes." He extended his hand, and Sharon shook it, feeling a bit dazed as she did so. "Sharon Hall," she said, trying to mold her face into a friendlier shape. "I have seen you coming and going from next door," she said. "I would have run into you eventually, I figured."

Sharon didn't know what to say. When did she ever know what to say to strangers? 

"You don't know what to say to me," the man intoned, his voice almost a rumbling. "That's because you spent too many of your formative years in—" and he circled her a bit predatorially in the cramped space of the cafe—"the libraries of two, no, three colleges on the West Coast, wasting what is definitely a first-class brain on pathetic research into...." he hesitated... "art history? No, rather literary history. Dull."

"Architectural history, actually," Sharon answered after staring, shocked, up at the Other One. "With a focus on..."

"Buildings destroyed in war, and as a result of natural disasters and political extremism. Oh, I see," he said, interrupting her. "So," he said, his voice slowing, "you've got questions."

"Mrs. Turner must have said something to you," she finally said, squinting up at him. 

"Pedestrian in the extreme," he replied, pulling out the chair across from her and sitting down. "I can see your education in the way you hold your fork and the excessive length and focus of it in the way you ordered your cake—interesting choice for lunch, by the way, telling me about the state of your family life right there—particularly since you seem to have _indulged yourself_ at some point this morning, although you were alone in your flat—he raised one eyebrow and paused at that, but immediately continued to speak—but what I need to know right now is, why are you making a habit of staring out the window at us day after day? What are you trying to do?"

"I'm not—" Sharon began, but the man waved away her denial.

Something about this man's obvious intelligence, even though he seemed to be turning it against her, disarmed Sharon. She had never been adept at the feints and parries of the beginnings of a friendship, had avoided small talk or done it abominably badly all her life. The few close friendships she'd ever had had been with people strong-willed and outgoing enough to do all of that for her until they reached a point of acquaintance where Sharon could respond in a more relaxed way. This man had instantly gone on the attack, but, she thought, not in a mean way, almost as though she found herself the subject of the kind of research she'd been, sort of, doing on _him._

And just like that, Sharon and Sherlock looked each other up and down, nodded, and decided they could understand each other.


	5. SH and SH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several coffees later, Sherlock asks: "Has it been a problem to have people know that you are having intimate sexual contact with a person of your own gender on a regular basis?"

Sherlock didn't know why he felt willing to confide in this odd duck of a woman from America who, after all, had been spying on him. Well, all right, he had tried to start out in the spirit of investigation, considering that any number of Eastern European criminal masterminds—or even the common or garden London variety—could have planted her in place to watch his and John's comings and goings. But the moment he had looked,  _really_  looked, at this Sharon from across the street, he knew it was nothing of the kind.

Here, in fact, was someone who was deeply unhappy, even though he had imagined quite a different outlook from this woman whom Mrs. Turner constantly threw up to Mrs. Hudson as an example that her ridiculously platonic flatmate lodgers could not hope to equal, something Sherlock imagined was common in America, especially the reputedly insufferable hipster climate of the Pacific Northwest where these two came from, but which was certainly not part of his life experience, the old married gay couple.

Sherlock wanted data.

But more than that, he wanted to understand what this Sharon had done wrong, for it was clear that it must have been something. A woman does not suddenly find herself hanging about peering out of windows, looking longingly at himself and John down in the street, somehow envying their very argument technique, and call herself happily married. Even he knew that. 

He searched his mind palace for information on gay couples of the past, and he found the space empty and gathering dust. So unfortunate. No, he couldn’t recall knowing any lesbians, certainly not any with such a long experience of being in a relationship. “Tell me, has it been a problem to have people know that you are having intimate sexual contact with a person of your own gender on a regular basis in your home, and perhaps in other locations?”

Sharon blanched. “On reflection, perhaps I could have asked that in a more socially acceptable way,” he said, not really meaning it, leaning forward in anticipation of her response.

 _So annoying, this having to moderate one's speech about matters of sex,_ Sherlock fumed internally. _Why he couldn't just pull out a sheet of paper on which to fashion a diagram, explaining how this woman and her...well, her wife,_ he supposed, _how they had managed to, first, determine that they were even interested in each other, and then how they had even gotten to the first kiss, let alone the first time agreeing to share a bed, because John certainly wouldn't..._ —Sherlock abruptly came back to the room where this slightly abashed woman was trying to avoid eye contact with him, watched closely by Mr. Chatterjee at the cash register. Sherlock knew to change topic.

They talked about London buildings, and then about the architecture of Eastern Europe, and then Sherlock went on for some minutes about the cathedral of Strasbourg and its rose window before Sharon cut him off to ask a more personal question: "So you and the blond one...?"

Sherlock knew he was coloring. "John Watson.  _Dr._  Watson." He hesitated, then added, "My flatmate. Colleague."

"Oh, so not..."

"No," Sherlock said, a tinge of embarrassment in his response that Sharon did not miss.

Sherlock Holmes would never have admitted, to this woman or to anyone else—perhaps not even to himself—his lack of experience in romantic matters. He was an expert in hiding it, to be sure; he knew how it all worked, after all, having done extensive research online and in books, and he flattered herself that he gave off every impression of a worldly man. He had researched the appropriate reactions, researched the glint in the eye, the raise of the eyebrow, the inclination of the head that indicated the man who was _in the know_ about these things, and again, he was missing just that one little piece of data that this Sharon would be fully capable of giving him. What was it— _what! _—that distinguished the same-gender relationship and the dull, traditional opposite-gender one?__

There must be something, there must, Sherlock thought. He made a mental note to get it out of Sharon, perhaps not instantly, but oh, he would have the data in the end. He decided to take a slightly more roundabout approach. 

"So, S...sharon," he said, not completely certain that he had remembered her name accurately. "I want to hear how you met your partner. Where you went on your first date. How you decided to come to London...."

She couldn't believe he was interested, and maybe he actually wasn't, in her life or indeed anything else she would have to say, maybe he was just being polite, but Sharon somehow found herself quite certain that this man was not in the habit of being polite, posh Received Pronunciation accent notwithstanding. Odd, she thought at intervals, how he seemed more to be gathering information than having a conversation, but then, she was not someone who could engage in conversation anyway. 

"Tell me about Dr. Watson, then," she finally said, and she didn't miss how his eyes lit up at that.

"I needed a flatmate. He was presented at the appropriate time. He is not  _completely_  idiotic, and he helps bring us clients with his ridiculously overdramatic blogging," Sherlock said, tossing his curls in what was definitely  _not_ a bit overdramatic. Sharon smirked back at him.

"What?" he responded, but he was smiling at her. A genuine sort of smile, which Sharon had a feeling was not common for him.

"Well," she started, "that's just how I met Cathy. It was a long time ago, of course. I was younger than even you are now." And she found herself telling him everything: her library job as a college freshman, her argument with the mercurial head of the reference department who turned out to be irritable mainly because she was attracted to her. The almost ridiculously quick courtship, and the rest, she was saying, is history, until the part where they adopted a pair of three-year-old twins from Guatemala and got married, fourteen years ago almost.

She sensed Sherlock's impatience and tried to turn the conversation away from herself, but he wasn't having it.

"But why London?" he wanted to know. "No, hang on....your partner's work, of course. Because she would not come here for something you wanted to do," he said with certainty.

Oh, he was good, this “consulting detective,” she realized. She found herself spilling it all: the increasing absences in the two years since Cathy had been promoted to the international division of Moran Architects, her increasing difficulty getting home from work on time, the numerous arguments, the loneliness. She stopped short of mentioning the lack of sex, but she wondered if that wasn't going to be the end of this conversation, if she wasn't careful how much she encouraged questioning of the sort Sherlock had abruptly started earlier.

But the moment she pronounced the name of the building Cathy's firm had sent her to work on, Sherlock surprised her by leaping out of his chair, grabbing his mobile phone and starting to stab at it.

_Important information about construction case. New source from unexpected location. Come home immediately. SH_

The answer should have come in seconds, and Sherlock expected it to be an angry one. When no answer came at all, he huffed in frustration and tried again.

_Aware of danger inherent in previous plan. Have new plan. Answer me immediately. SH_

And then,

_John! SH_

“Something wrong?” Sharon asked tentatively.

Sherlock’s mobile buzzed, and slamming one hand on the table in frustration, he clicked on the mobile with the other, glancing at the message and then frowning. “Mycroft,” he breathed.

“Who?”

Suddenly Sherlock seemed to realize that he had been sitting, in a remarkable imitation of a dull, tedious regular person, having a conversation with a woman he didn’t even know. How long had he been doing that? And where was John? No wonder Mr. Chatterjee was looking at him strangely from behind the counter. He leapt to his feet without an explanation and whirled out the door before Sharon could react.

“Don’t worry about him,” Mr. Chatterjee said conversationally as she craned her neck to look after him. “Sherlock’ll be out after Dr. Watson, I expect. Always up to something, those two are.” And he turned and receded into the back room. 

 


End file.
